However, the effort grew quickly to represent all U.S. Catholic dioceses with claims related to past mission work among Native Americans.
It solicited aid from the bishops and laity through various appeals and through allied fundraising organizations, such as the Catholic Indian Missionary Association.
Meanwhile, in June that year, the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda of the Holy See approved of the Catholic Bureau, and in 1884, the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore confirmed it and added a board of directors composed of bishops.
[3] While the Peace Policy remained in force, the government collaborated with Christian organizations to provide schools for Native Americans.
Consequently, they supported a national school system plan for Native American children put forth in 1889 by Thomas Jefferson Morgan, which he began to implement the following year when he took office as Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
It promoted in-church appeals from bishops and missionaries; it launched a fundraising support organization called the Society for the Preservation of the Faith among Indian Children coupled with The Indian Sentinel magazine as a membership benefit; and it collaborated with other allied fundraising groups, such as the Marquette League.
Following the federal appeals system, the Supreme Court ruled on it unanimously in 1908 and found that tribal trust assets were, in fact, private and not public funds that Native Americans could spend as they wished.
However, the Catholic Bureau feared that its close working relationship with Collier’s Indian Office might revive the specter of anti-Catholic agitation.
[6] Because Congress had curtained domestic spending during World War II, appropriations for reservation-based Catholic schools dropped to $153,000 by 1946.
However, strong post-war economic growth and active lobbying in Congress by the Catholic Bureau increased the funding for these schools to $289,000 by 1952.
So in 1986, the Catholic Bureau financed a redesigned textbook series titled, Builders of the New Earth: The Formation of Deacons and Lay Ministers by the staff of the Sioux Spiritual Center of the Rapid City diocese.
In 1977, a U.S. bishops’ statement urged the United States government to develop policies to provide greater justice for Native Americans.
Later that year the Catholic Bureau followed by testifying in support of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which Congress enacted in 1978.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Bureau began to promote the canonization cause of its namesake, Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th-century Mohawk convert.
[11] The Bureau regularly published promotional pamphlets and periodicals, which raised funds for Catholic missions and schools in the United States and chronicled their activities.
Marquette University provides selected images from the Catholic Bureau records and The Indian Sentinel as separate online digital collections.